Updates on Android phones are certainly improving nowadays from what they used to be. In the past you may have never received an OS update from the manufacturer of your phone, but were stuck with figuring out how to do it yourself if you wanted to extend the life of the device. Thankfully if you purchase one of the flagship phones you’re essentially set to receive updates for at least a year, maybe two depending on the phone, so long as you’re patient of course. Many have complained that the speed at which OEMs spit out these updates is far too slow, and ends up only being around 1 update a year on average, but honestly how is this any slower than what, say, Apple does with its own iPhone? Google tends to update Android every 6 months, or at least that’s what the going trend has been since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launched at the end of 2011, and that’s just a little too fast for OEMs to work the update through the machine of industry. Google is now preparing to announce Android 4.4 Kit Kat any day now, and while rumors have that announcement pegged anywhere from this Saturday the 28th to sometime mid October, one thing’s for sure: if you own a flagship device from a major manufacturer, you’re probably going to be receiving the Android 4.3 update by the end of the year.

Case in point with HTC, who has fervently been updating the HTC One throughout the past few months. While the HTC One shipped with a nearly year’s old version of Android, Android 4.1, they are sending out the Android 4.3 update to all unlocked HTC One phones around the world as we speak. This update started rolling out to One users in Taiwan just a few days ago, and now we’re getting word from Android Highlights that the update has made its way to other countries as well, and should be on all unlocked HTC One phones and Developer Editions in the next 2-3 weeks. While there’s no word on how long it will take US carriers to get this update out, the AT&T update has already been leaked on popular ROM site RootzWiki, and is flashable on both T-Mobile and AT&T phones. As always with ROMs we caution flashing it unless you know what you are doing, as you could pretty easily brick your expensive device. The changelog itself is pretty exciting, and brings a few surprises along with the usual Android 4.3 stuff:

Android 4.3 update

Battery charging percentage indicator

Improved Gallery

Low-light performance noticeably improved

Added few more Video highlights options

Ability to add soundtracks to your Highlights

Overall System got stable and more

The update is a fairly hefty 564.04MB considering how light Sense 5 is, meaning that there’s probably more than a few goodies found under the hood here. In the changelog HTC states that low-light photo performance has been noticeably improved, which is great news for any HTC One owner that has taken a low-light shot. The phone already does an amazing job grabbing light from practically anywhere you wouldn’t normally find it, so we imagine this will only help things further, taking these pictures faster and possibly producing better images as well. As usual if you have an unlocked HTC One that isn’t carrier branded and haven’t received the update yet, go to settings, scroll down to about phone and click on software updates, check for updates. If your particular phone hasn’t been added to the update list yet, don’t fret, the update will be hitting your phone in the next 2-3 weeks. If you’ve received the update and find any more goodies we should know about, let us know!